


Final Boss Ganondorf, Take—How Many are We at Now?

by NikuKnight



Category: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Game Novelization (I guess?), Gen, Glitches, Randomizer Co-op, honestly this is almost crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 02:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20283637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikuKnight/pseuds/NikuKnight
Summary: (An Ocarina of Time Co-op Randomizer One-Shot) Follow Link as he tries to make sense of the world he lives in—complete with save state scumming, glitches, game freezes, and more!





	Final Boss Ganondorf, Take—How Many are We at Now?

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god guys, this version of the game was a RIOT. Having two Links in one world was fantastic, and adding in being a randomizer only made it better. You really learn all the secrets of the game when the items you need could be literally ANYWHERE. 
> 
> Enough talking, though. On to the story!

Link didn't know how he got into this mess.

Maybe that wasn't entirely true. He knew that he did a lot of ill-advised stuff—going through the deku tree without a sword had just been _asking_ for trouble, he knew—but he was pretty sure this particular time it wasn't his fault.

"This particular time" meaning this moment, where he hung impossibly in the air, falling without losing any altitude, on fire, and somehow not taking damage from Ganon's swords despite them _clearly going through him._ Zelda's gasps every time it happened were not making things better. Thank you for your concern, Zelda, but he was fine. Stuck behind some spikes maybe, but surprisingly fine.

All this was after taking three tries to defeat the evil king in his Gerudo form, before he turned into…whatever he was now.

Maybe it was best to start at the beginning.

It all started when he first got his own fairy, Navi. That morning, he woke up to items randomly spawning in his inventory. Four items exactly. And hey—weren't those the things Mido bragged about having? How did he get Mido's stuff? However it happened, he did not want to be blamed for stealing.

Upon further investigation, Link discovered he had a doppelgänger, and he thought, _why him?_

Little did he know, he was going to be asking himself this question a lot.

So it was not him, but his doppelgänger who had raided Mido's house. Somehow, their inventories were connected. The other Link even had his own Navi!

Well, he supposed it was time to leave the forest if he didn't want to get in trouble for his double's thievery. But to do that he needed to be able to defend himself. He knew there was a kokiri sword by the training area. He just needed to be careful not to get hit by rolling boulders.

When he made it to the chest he found that there was no kokiri sword. Instead, there was a golden token that was labeled "Gold Skulltula Token" in his inventory.

What? 

And so began his strange adventure.

* * *

When he next met up with the other Link, they decided on a game plan. Both Navis were insistent that they go to the Great Deku tree, but there was only so much they could do without a sword or slingshot. In order to find that, they decided to divide and conquer. As long as they each found different things to do, they could cut time spent searching in half.

So Link did everything he could around Kakariko Village while his double continued on to Goron City. Surprisingly, the gate was open. They didn't even need to talk to the guard. Strange. 

It was in Kakariko Village that the gold skulltula token found a purpose: freeing the cursed family. They gave him items for every ten tokens. With his luck, that's where he'd find the slingshot.

* * *

Link looked at where the business scrub had been in disbelief. The "mysterious item" it had sold him for fifteen rupees had been a heart container. Most of the time it was rupees or heart pieces or gold skulltula tokens, but an entire heart container? For fifteen rupees? There had to be some kind of catch. 

Nonetheless he accepted the extra heart to his life force. If the business scrub wanted to sell cheap that was its loss.

* * *

Going through Hyrule Field when you had a doppelgänger was always an experience.

For one thing, they could hear each other no matter how far away they were, as long as they were both in the field. When the easiest mode of travel was to roll, there was a lot of yelling.

Then they got Epona, and things went from weird to downright bizarre.

Sure, riding a horse was easy enough. But Link's double also gained a horse somehow, only his was invisible? This lead to Link seeing himself ride through the air, bow-legged as if he was indeed on a horse, at roughly horse-speed. According to the other Link, _he_ was riding the actual Epona, and _Link_ was the one on the invisible horse. 

All in all, it was a very confusing experience.

* * *

Link was pretty sure he wasn't doing things the way he was supposed to.

His doppelgänger had completed the Shadow Temple, Dodongo's Cavern, the Forest Temple, and was working on the Spirit Temple. Link had done the Water Temple, the Fire Temple, Jabu Jabu's belly, and was working on the Great Deku Tree. They had finally found the slingshot, opening the rest of it up for them. Of course, the Great Deku Tree was only open as a child, and the two Links had yet to find the kokiri sword.

Needless to say, they went through a lot of sticks.

You ever try defeating a redead without a sword? The stupid things are immune to everything! It takes four sticks to defeat one! When you can only carry ten sticks, that's a lot.

The two redeads under Kakariko Village had been the death of him. Quite literally. Somehow, though, instead of staying dead, he was able to turn back time just a little bit and try again. He shouldn't have been surprised; he was the Hero of Time after all. 

It took three tries to finally kill the dang things.

* * *

At last, the two Links were able to get to Ganondorf's castle. Most of the temples and dungeons they had done separately, (with the exception of the Spirit Temple) but this time they were in it together.

Which is where things started to get weird.

Whenever they'd complete a trial, only one of them would get warped back to the main room. The other had to go through the trial backwards.

In the Fire Trial, the sinking platform worked for them separately. As in, one Link could walk on it, but it would only sink for them. To whichever Link was watching, the one on the platform would appear to sink into the unmoving ground.

In the same trial, the giant stone that could be moved by the golden gauntlets would land itself high up on the wall for whoever hadn't thrown it. In order for them both to beat the trial, the first Link had to throw the stone, get the silver rupee, then wait at the end of the room while the second Link somehow reset the room by falling into the lava before doing the same.

Despite the ground's discrepancy there, in the Shadow Trial lighting the torch would make the platforms appear for both of them. In the end, Link shot the fire arrows to make the platforms appear while his double actually used said platforms to complete the trial. They had given up on both finishing every trial at that point.

And then came Ganondorf himself. It seemed having two Links somehow broke the world, because they somehow each got their own iteration of the evil king. Unfortunately, this did not stop them from sharing the same inventory. Only one of them could use a potion before it was gone. The same went for fairies.

Screams of varying levels of drama rang out each time one of them missed the volley and got hit with the ball of electricity. And that wasn't even mentioning Ganondorf's OP, impossible-to-dodge black hole attack that took three hearts every time it hit.

It wasn't until the third time challenging the gerudo that Link realized the black hole attack was actually an opening.

* * *

After finally defeating the evil king the castle began to collapse, which was just his luck, really. The whole world shook and rocks rained down, Zelda stopping to gasp every time he was hit.

Oddly enough, getting hit by large, falling rocks only took a quarter of a heart of health. Who knew?

All was going about as well as it could, considering the circumstances, when the entire world froze. Link waited for it to go back to normal, but it never did. Sighing inwardly, Link turned back time to the last point he could remember clearly that wouldn't get him killed immediately.

Unfortunately, that happened to be before he challenged Ganondorf.

Fed up with the unfair battle, Link manipulated time once again, jumping forward to after he defeated the man. Now all he had to redo was the castle escape.

Only, his doppelgänger was nowhere to be seen. What had happened to him?

The world froze once more before he finally made it out of the castle.

* * *

Upon his defeat Ganondorf had become Ganon, some kind of bipedal boar-like beast. Link had taken great joy in fighting the creature with deku nuts, which, unlike with most other enemies, seemed to be doing real damage. It was beyond convenient, as deku nuts were both fast and had a large damaging area, which was far more than even the master sword could say.

Things were going so well that he really shouldn't have been surprised when it all went to hell.

Ganon managed to knock Link away with one of his blades before he could roll between the monster's legs again, batting him past a wall of spikes and into the fire just beyond. Which brings us back to where we started: Link, on fire, falling but never landing despite being inches away from the ground, Ganon's swords swiping through him without doing damage, and Zelda gasping every time they should have.

Initially, Link was panicking, trying to escape this invisible hold. After a minute or two of not dying, however, he began to laugh. Yeah, he was pretty sure he'd lost it. What had tipped him off? Maybe it was the doppelgänger, or the inconsistent physics, or the invisible horses or the kings who could turn into giant pig monsters. Sages? Temples? Trials? It was amazing what he could come up with when he was asleep.

Although, normally he would have woken up by now.

His laughter quieted. If catching on fire _and_ falling didn't wake him up, he didn't know what would.

Getting himself back under control, Link did the only thing he could do: turn time back to the beginning of the battle.

This time, he managed to defeat the former king. He had no fairies left, but it didn't matter. He could turn back time as many times as he needed to win.

He never saw his doppelgänger again.

**Author's Note:**

> So my best friend Niki and I decided to do an Ocarina of Time Co-op Randomizer. It was incredible. I tried to be as accurate as I could in this almost-novelization, but it's been a few months and we never actually documented anything beyond a few scattered screenshots. Most of these experiences are from my memory. None of it's made up though, I can assure you. 
> 
> Ganondorf was a PAIN. Dear lord, he was awful. As soon as we got past the first stage and had to do the castle escape, Niki and I had to disconnect our games so that the emulator would be able to handle it with minimal freezing. We were never quite able to sync back up afterwards thanks to save state discrepancies. Unlike the Links in-universe, however, we stayed on the phone so we could still talk while we attempted to clear the game. 
> 
> Cutscenes were turned off for this version of the game, and most gates were open so we could explore the world straight after starting. This meant the the Great Deku Tree really was one of the last things we did, followed by the spirit temple. 
> 
> We didn't find the kokiri sword until we were halfway through Ganondorf's castle. 
> 
> I have a video of that glitch that the story starts off on. It's posted on my tumblr:
> 
>   
<https://kaknakanak.tumblr.com/post/187073930330/using-tumblr-to-share-this-since-i-wrote-a-quick>  



End file.
